"Thatch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... baby disappeared as soon as I saw my father; which was not surprising, for he could not be called a prepossessing half-breed. His lower lip protruded and hung sullenly. He had heavy brows and a shaggy thatch of hair. Our St. Regis Iroquois kept to the buckskins, though they often had hunting shirts of fulled flannel; and my father's buckskins ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Seine. As a lark drops its nest among the grasses, so a few peasant people had dropped their little farms and cottages amid the great green woods on the winding river. It was a pretty place, with one steep, stony street, shady with poplars and with elms; quaint houses, about whose thatch a cloud of white and gray pigeons fluttered all day long; a little aged chapel with a conical red roof; and great barns covered with ivy and thick creepers, red and purple, and lichens that were yellow ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... fire was particularly urgent in time of war; for, as Caesar informs us, these people were acquainted with a method of throwing red-hot clay bullets from slings, and burning javelins, on the thatch of houses. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us—hey? But a shakedown under a snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out of my own country. What a port ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down the smithy—a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... looked round he thought he had never seen such a shabby room in his life. There was not so much as a chair or table or carpet in it; he could see all the thatch and the rafters in the roof, for the chamber was not even ceiled, but showed the thatch and rafters, and, as I said before, there was not a single article of furniture in the room, except the bed. How different from the pretty little ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... cabins on the bogs of Ireland are not poorer places to live in. In the warmer regions, the common people live in mere huts of cane, consisting of a few poles covered with dry plantain leaves, palms, or cornstalks, made into a thatch by braiding and twining them together. A mat woven of dried husks and laid upon the ground forms the only bed. Neither chairs, tables, nor benches are seen in these cabins,—they are unknown luxuries. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... rings On his way to the bale: nor shall somewhat alone With the moody be molten; but manifold hoard is, 3010 Gold untold of by tale that grimly is cheapened, And now at the last by this one's own life Are rings bought, and all these the brand now shall fret, The flame thatch them over: no earl shall bear off One gem in remembrance; nor any fair maiden Shall have on her halse a ring-honour thereof, But in grief of mood henceforth, bereaved of gold, Shall oft, and not once alone, alien earth tread, Now that the host-learn'd hath laid aside laughter, The game and the ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... Finding abundance of stone and lime, and every thing he could wish, and the land around being exceedingly fertile, he applied himself diligently to build a church, magazines, and a house for himself, all of stone, the others being of timber covered with thatch, every person being allowed to build according to his own fancy and ability; but the plan was regularly marked ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... are built of is porous, in consequence of which the walls on the south side are very damp and are often covered on the inside with a green slime. The houses are thatched with a reed-like grass called tussock, which is grown in the gardens or on a piece of ground near. The thatch will last from ten to fifteen years, that on the sunny side lasting considerably the longer. Turf is used to cover the ridge of the roof, but this is not altogether satisfactory as the soil works through, and when there is a gale the rooms below ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the plainest woman in England, bar none.[6] Even in youth I was not, strictly speaking, voluptuously lovely. Short, stumpy, with a fringe like the thatch of a newly evicted cottage, such was my appearance at twenty, and such it remains. Like Cain, I was branded.[7] But enough of personalities. I had in youth but one friend, a lady of kingly descent (the kings, to be sure, were Irish), and of bewitching loveliness. When she rushed into my ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... What thatch survives is dung for the grass, The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof Will not bear a mower to mow it. But Only fowls have ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... in proportion. His great arms hung down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His skin was quite dark, almost negroid; and a thick, close mat of curly black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was muscular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fascinated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft and pleasant water—a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the Puritan settlement was made—had early induced Matthew Maule to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me; not, I fancy, a result of gratitude, but rather the recognition of a certain admiration and awe which she inspires in your Excellency's foolish old servant. She has taken up her abode in a deserted hut, built of dried reeds and thatch, such as they keep cows in, among the olives on the cliffs. She was not there, but about the hut pecked some white pigeons, and from it, startling me foolishly with its unexpected sound, came the eerie bleat of her pet goat.... Among the olives it was twilight already, with streakings ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the gun wadding fired by the mock cannon was thrown on the open roof of the Globe, and immediately ignited the thatch, spreading flames around the top rim ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... is weather-stained with years — (O Child in Me, I wonder why you stay.) Its windows are bedimmed with rain of tears, The walls have lost their rose, its thatch is gray. One after one its guests depart, So dull a host is my old heart. (O Child in Me, I wonder ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Seldom, on a week day, were they permitted to go to their huts during rain; and even had this privilege been granted, many of those miserable habitations were in so dilapidated a condition, that they would afford little or no protection. Negro huts are built of logs, covered with boards or thatch, having no flooring, and but one apartment, serving all the purposes of sleeping, cooking, &c. Some are furnished with a temporary loft. I have seen a whole family herded together in a loft ten feet by twelve. In cold weather, they gather around the fire, spread their blankets ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... custom of the land, for among Malays the husband usually shares his father-in-law's house for a long period after his marriage. But Haji Ali had a fine new house of his own, brave with wattled walls stained cunningly in black and white, and with a luxuriant covering of thatch. Moreover, he had taken the daughter of a poor man to wife, and could dictate his own terms to her and to her parents. The girl went willingly enough, for she was exchanging poverty for wealth, a miserable hovel for a handsome home, and parents who knew exactly how to get out ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... construction. It was as if the proud people of this remote, mountain world, wishing to owe their all to their own country, nothing to outsiders, had preferred to make their houses with their own hands out of their own rocks, hewing the walls and roofing them with thatch from grass ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have said the country looked as if uninhabited, there were numerous villages hidden away in the long grass and brushwood, invisible at a distance, being huts of thatch or mud, and not so high as the grass among which they were placed. From these villages came most of our servants, and also the middlemen, who acted as brokers between us, the white men, and the negroes who brought ivory and gum and india-rubber ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... they were for a full minute, hands clasped; Andy with his jaw dropped and staring in a dazed sort of way at Dave. He raised his disengaged hand helplessly to his thatch, gulped suspiciously, and ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... barrack was divided into three rooms, a saloon, a vestibule, and a grand dining-room, which communicated with the kitchens by a passage parallel to that I have just mentioned. Outside the barrack, and connected with the kitchen, was a little shed, covered with thatch, which served as a washroom, and which was also ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... possibility, with the eternal ingenuousness of the male. And yet nature had played them this scurvy trick. The young heart in the old shell. Grown-up boys with a foot in the grave. Dependent upon mind and address alone to win a woman's regard, while the woman dreamed of the man with a thick thatch over his brains and the responsive magnetism of her own years. Poor old fighting-cocks! What a jade nature was . . . or was it merely the tyranny of an Idea, carefully inculcated at the nativity of the social group, with other arbitrary laws, in behalf of the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of a long, almost incoherent missive must suffice. Even Cranston's lips twitched under the heavy thatch of his moustache as he listened. Even we, who like Mrs. Cranston, must admit it wasn't quite kind in her, no matter how natural, to read it afterward to Agatha Loomis, who, although declining to read, did not quite decline to hear at ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... till morning, Christy Mahon. Wait till you lay eyes on her leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields, and she without a tramp itself to keep in ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... cottage with a hipped roof of thatch, having dormer windows breaking up into the eaves, a chimney standing in the middle of the ridge and another at each end. The window-shutters were not yet closed, and the fire- and candle-light within radiated forth upon the thick ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... marketing when she has a mind; for the nearest town, Gort, is ten miles away. The roof of her little cabin is thatched with rushes, and a garden of weeds grows on it, and the rain comes through. But she is soon to have a new thatch; for she thinks she won't live long, and she wouldn't like the rain to be coming down on her when she is dead and laid out. There is heather in blow on the hills about her home, and foxglove reddens the clay-banks, and loosetrife the marshy hollows; and rush-cotton waves ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... said no more, and all three crept under cover of a patch of plantains to the shelter of the broad eaves of the thatch of reeds which covered the dwelling. Here they found that a hole had been made in the cane walls, and they crept into the house, thus avoiding the entrance by the door, which faced another house at ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... your heart as the brave sea holds the foam, Take me far away to the hills that hide your home; Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door— But what if I heard my first love calling ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... farm implements or human labor to be seen. "Which is the inspector's house," inquired Anton, in dismay. The driver looked round, and at last made up his mind that it was a small one-storied building, with straw thatch ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... red scratches and scorch-marks on the exposed chest and was torn over the arms, where were more excoriations of the flesh. And the ravaged face! How hard it was. How relentless, even in the utter abandonment of bodily exhaustion! The skin was caked with black dust and sweat. The darkened thatch of yellow hair was dank and wet. The fair beard, usually so trim, was singed in places, matted, and had bits of cinder and ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... anything save a little plot of land which they sow with rice—not to sell, but only for what is necessary for their families. Their houses are built on four posts; their walls are of bamboo and thatch, and are very small. Such was the spoliation committed on a people so poor and wretched that they would say: "Father, I will give the king twenty reals of eight annually, so that they will spare me from repartimientos;" but, having investigated, all their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... water in a minute. The ferns grew immensely thick there; but someone had thinned out a few of the roots from the ground, leaving the uprooted plant with the ferns still living, to form a rough kind of thatch above a piece of earth big enough for a man's body. In the scented shade of this thatch, with the side of his face turned towards me, a big, rough, bearded man sat, filing away some bright steel irons ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... evacuate our domain; but similar success did not attend our endeavours to dislodge the swarms of musquitos, scorpions, lizards, and centipedes from our habitations. They secreted themselves in the thatch, and the sides of the house during the day, and failed not to disturb with their onslaughts during ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... him, giving free rein to eyes and lips and all the graceful tricks of her hands. It did not disturb her in the least that he rode beside her in silence, when she had observed that from under the bristling thatch of his brows his gaze ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... assume so much importance in the world's eye had about three thousand inhabitants within its lowly; thatch-roofed houses. It fronted directly upon the seacoast and stretched backward in a southerly direction, having the sandy downs on the right and left, and a swampy, spongy soil on the inner verge, where it communicated with the land. Its northern part, small and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ships belonging to the prefect of Syria, that is the sultan; and destroyed a considerable portion of the city by means of their catapults and bombards[6], many houses being burnt to the ground, as they are covered with thatch like cottages, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... The duke himself, as he leaped on shore, happened to stumble and fall; but had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country. And a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving seisin of the kingdom, he presented to his general. The joy and alacrity of William and his whole army were so great, that they were nowise discouraged, even when they heard of Harold's great victory over the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... I.' So says Giles, 'Oh, if you falls on squire, I don't vally that; squire's back is broad enough to bear the load, but I'm a poor man.' That's how a' goes on, ye know. Poverty is always in his mouth, but the old chap have got a hatful of money hid away in the thatch or some're, only he haan't a got the heart to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... about it, meadows were tilling, and the whole landscape breathed an air of well-established age, amid the lustiness of youth. The very farmhouses looked to have grown where they stood, as indeed the upper part of them had. For from the thatch of their roofs, deep bedded in mud, sprang all manner of plants that made of the eaves gardens in the air. The ridgepoles stood transformed into beds of flowers; their long tufts of grass waved in the wind, the blossoms nodding their heads amicably to the passers-by. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... So we went, my company and I, to the Dun of the Lord of Luachar, and found an earthen rampart with a fosse before it, and on the top of the rampart was a fence of oaken posts interlaced with wattles, and over this we saw the many-coloured thatch of a great dwelling-house, and its white walls painted with bright colours under the broad eaves. So I stood forth and called to the Lord of Luachar and bade him make ready to pay an eric to the mother of Glonda, whatsoever she should demand. But he laughed at us and cursed us and bade us ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... to Sambo Should take his place and fight; An' it's betther to have a naygur's hue Than a liver that's wake an' white; Though Sambo's black as the ace o' spades His finger a thrigger can pull, An' his eye runs sthraight on the barrel sight From under its thatch o' wool. So hear me all, boys, darlins! Don't think I'm tippen' you chaff, The right to be kilt I'll divide wid him, An' give him the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... her down to the meadow, so he'd just get her up on the house top-for the house, you must know, was thatched with sods, and a fine crop of grass was growing there. Now their house lay close up against a steep down, and he thought if he laid a plank across to the thatch at the back he'd easily get the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered—not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces. But south of us, along the ascending trail by which we had come, the westering sun glowed red across a ledge of rock, from which ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... both sides came towards the middle, leaving an empty space between, along which the dark water showed itself, hurrying away as if in fear of its life from the white death of the frost. The wheel stood motionless, and the drip from the thatch of the mill over it in the sun, had frozen in the shadow into icicles, which hung in long spikes from the spokes and the floats, making the wheel—soft green and mossy when it revolved in the gentle sun-mingled ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the open fingers of one hand slowly through his sunburnt thatch of hair. "Doggone my hide, if it don't look like they took it with them," he murmured. "But that ain't reasonable, Dave. The man in charge of this hold-up knew his business. It was smooth work all the way through. If it ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... which had been falling to ruins,' said Reggie. 'That was mostly Neil's doing, and Hamish and I helped. Filled up the holes in the thatch with fresh heather. We all worked at that part of it. Then you see we've made a bit of a garden and thrown up the turf for a dyke on the side where the stone one was broken down. The shells on the path were brought up from the beach of this ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... entered the pigeon-house and left in agitated manner, cooing loudly; they circled above the dwelling, sought the trees, alighted on the thatch of the cabin, descended to earth ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... shafts of sunrise had scarce pierced the deep gloom of the silent forest ere the village woke to life. Right beside the thatch-covered dwelling of Macy O'Shea, now a man of might, there towers a stately TAMANU tree; and, as the first faint murmur of women's voices arises from the native huts, there is a responsive twittering and cooing in the thickly-leaved branches, and further back in the forest the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... with the girls in the wash-house," said Halldis. "All chattering together like starlings on a thatch. All talking at once, and none listening. Do you ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... manure, set up sheep hurdles, shear sheep, do repairs, hedge, cut wood, weed, and make folds. In harvest one may reap; in August, September, and in October one may mow, set woad with a dibble, gather home many crops, thatch them and cover them over, cleanse the folds, prepare cattle sheds and shelters ere too severe a winter come to the farm, and also diligently prepare the soil. In winter one should plough and in severe frosts cleave timber, make an orchard, and do many affairs indoors, thresh, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... boats and freight it with a suitable cargo.* The body of the boat was very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewn together; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piled the bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch of straw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes a few donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till they had disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for their return voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those by the land ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... before us was of this description, and had probably been a woodman's hut when the surrounding country was all one huge forest. The walls were not more than five feet high, over which hung the deep and heavy roof, covered with moss, and the thatch was overlaid with a heap of black mould, which afforded plentiful nourishment to stonecrops, and various tufts of beautifully feathered grass, which waved in fantastic plumes over it. The door, the frame of which was all aslant, seemed almost ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Rip's red hair. "That's a fine thatch of hair you have. In a week or two it will be gone and you'll have no more hair than an egg. A well ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... good offices for the departed. While a Tagbanua corpse is above ground it is liable to be eaten by a vampire called the balbal that lives on Mindanao, has the form of a man with wings and great claws, tears open the thatch of houses and consumes bodies by means of a long tongue, which it thrusts through the opening in the roof. These Tagbanuas do not believe in a heaven in the skies, because, they say, you could not get up ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... it your proneness to domestication, For he dwells in man's barn, and I build in man's thatch, As we say to each other—but, to our vexation, O'er your safety ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... built—meanwhile I was to live with him till it was completed. I chose a site about thirty yards away from where we stood; and then, to show that no time would be lost, Eusis at once sent five or six men into the bush to cut posts, and ordered all the women and girls to begin making the thatch for the roof and cutting cane for the walls ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... side, as the visitor to the Gardens may frequently see it do, with its head between its fore-legs, joining its fore and hindfeet, and spreading the tail so as to cover the whole body. Huddled up under this thatch, it might almost be taken for a bundle of coarse and badly dried hay. The tail is thickly covered with long hairs, placed vertically, the hairs draggling on the ground. When the creature is irritated, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... invariably old; there were men among them in their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the house. His gait was like his body, his stride large and loose. The lack of nervous energy which kept his mind from a high tension was shown again in the heavy fall of his feet and the forward slump of his head. His hands dangled aimlessly at his sides, as though in need of occupation. A ragged thatch of blond hair covered his head and it was sunburned to straw color at ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... that the last Census Report discloses that there are in Ireland nearly 10,000 "houses" with one room and one window apiece, wretched cabins inhabited by about 40,000 people, the peat smoke from the fire in which escapes through a hole in the thatch, gives some idea of the miserable conditions existing in parts of the West of Ireland. Of the quarter of a million of cottages in the second class of the Census—those, that is, with from one to four doors and windows—a large number also no doubt are quite unfit ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... And, far as mortal eye can compass sight, The mountain-howitzer, the broken road, The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed, The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch,[co] The magazine in rocky durance stowed, The bolstered steed beneath the shed of thatch, The ball-piled pyramid, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... rules Ge'metricall in beards are found. Besides the upper lip's strange variation, Corrected from mutation to mutation; As 'twere from tithing unto tithing sent, Pride gives to Pride continuall punishment. Some (spite their teeth) like thatch'd eves downeward grows, And some growes upwards in despite their nose. Some their mustatioes of such length doe keepe, That very well they may a maunger sweepe: Which in Beere, Ale, or Wine, they drinking plunge, And sucke the liquor up, as 'twere a Spunge; But 'tis a Slovens ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because there was a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and after the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the dry ground with a curious sniffing rustle close to Guido. A shrill cry ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... institution, because I say men are not thereby made members of Christ's body, or because I say that it is not essential to church-communion. Why should I be thought to be against a fire in the chimney, because I say it must not be in the thatch of the house? Consider, then, how pernicious a thing it is to make every doctrine, though true, the bound of communion; this is that which destroys unity; and, by this rule, all men must be perfect before ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in dark grey stone, Siva's recumbent bull. Here millet fields, with hedges of blue aloe or euphorbias like seven-branched candlesticks, announced a place of habitation; soon the village itself appeared, a long irregular line of white-walled houses roofed with thatch or tile, and here and there greater dwellings with carved balconies and barred verandahs, behind which impassive white-robed figures sat and seemed to ponder upon life. On the right, perhaps, would ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mostly bound in turf or bog grass, well corded down with ropes of heather, giving the roof a singular ribby look, rounded on the ridge. In many cases a stone is attached to each end of the rope, so as to make it hug the thatch closely. I noticed that in a considerable number of the old cottages, the stone wall only reached up a foot or two from the ground, the rest being made up of blocks of peat. Some of the oldest had no premonitory symptoms of a chimney, except a hole in the roof for the smoke. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... dainty—is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil, and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to make marine soap, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fierce and foremost in the battle, Macumazahn. He who would sleep safe and of whom, when he dies, folk will say 'He has eaten' (i.e., he has lived out his life), must do more than this. He must guard his tongue and even his thoughts! he must listen to the stirring of rats in the thatch and look for snakes in the grass; he must trust few, and least of all those who sleep upon his bosom. But those who have the Lion's blood in them or who are prone to charge like a buffalo, often neglect these matters and therefore in the end they ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and in the attempt lost his balance and nearly precipitated himself to the ground below. Cautiously he drew back, still looking about for some means to cross the chasm. One of the saplings of the roof, protruding beyond the palm leaf thatch, caught his attention. With a single wrench he tore it from its fastenings. Extending it toward the palisade he discovered that it just spanned the gap, but he dared not attempt to cross upon ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stairs, has a thin partition at one end of it, to screen off the humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles of the day; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, and overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the father and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shattery casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of wintry nights. A few articles of crockery and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... under the thatch she flung herself face downwards on the bed, and lay tense. What should she do? What should she do? He had seen her. He was on her track. Sooner or later he would run her to earth. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... considerable extent of ground, they have a very imposing effect, unlike any inhabited by persons of the same rank in England. But close even to the palaces of the most wealthy are to be seen wretched mud huts; and rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch, and bamboos, often rest against their outer walls, while there are avenues opening from the principal streets, intersected in all directions by native bazaars, filled with unsightly ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... of the defence busy in the courtlage, the lieutenant led the remainder of his force through an orchard divided from the south end of the house by a narrow lane, over which a barn abutted. Its high blank wall had been loopholed on both floors and was quite unassailable, but its roof was of thatch. And as he studied it, keeping his men in cover, a happy inspiration occurred to him. He sent back to the camp for an oil-can and a parcel of cotton wadding, and by three o'clock had opened a brisk fire of flaming bullets on the thatch. Within ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fire, but I knew from the position of the blaze (which was only a few hundred yards from where I stood), that there was no house there, or any combustible that would burn, and what perplexed me most was to see pieces of burning thatch and timber sparks fall hissing into the water at my feet. When the fire seemed at its height the firing appeared to weaken, and when the clear sound of a bugle floated out on the midnight air, it suddenly ceased, and I could hear distinctly the sound of cavalry coming at a canter, their accoutrements ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... for the smoke, whirled and beaten about by the breeze, she would have thought the house was not really a human habitation, but a bit of the moor itself risen up, so brown and rough and weather-beaten it looked under its old lichen-grown thatch. But the smoke was real smoke, and Esther, stepping nearer, saw one window lit by the leaping, cheery glow of ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... house-roome will serve thee, lay Stover up drie, And everie sort by it selfe for to lie. Or stack it for litter if roome be too poore, And thatch out the residue, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... low with no upper storey, walls of wooden beams and roofs of thatch. Men mostly clad in sheep skins, and women in red dresses with a red cloth over the head, bare legs and sandals. Winter wheat ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... that and in other parts of Scotland, manerial bondage, to fifty-two days in the year at once; besides many other services to be performed at different though regular and stated times; as tanning leather for brogans, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: so many pounds of wool to be ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... was a flat thatch, and the weight of the snow had been too much for it. Claude wondered if he should have put on a new thatch that fall; but the old one wasn't leaky, and had ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... Now and then they stopped to rest, and each thought that he never had seen in all his life before such a hand at quarterstaff. At last Robin gave the stranger a blow upon the ribs that made his jacket smoke like a damp straw thatch in the sun. So shrewd was the stroke that the stranger came within a hair's-breadth of falling off the bridge, but he regained himself right quickly and, by a dexterous blow, gave Robin a crack on the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... cottages in Sky, instead of being one compacted mass of stones, are often formed by two exterior surfaces of stone, filled up with earth in the middle, which makes them very warm. The roof is generally bad. They are thatched, sometimes with straw, sometimes with heath, sometimes with fern. The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady's hair in papers; but I should think that, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Woman is to reverence; Thy clear heart, fresh as e'er was forest-flower, Still opens more to me its beauteous dower;— But let praise hush,—Love asks no evidence To prove itself well-placed: we know not whence It gleans the straws that thatch its humble bower: We can but say we found it in the heart, Spring of all sweetest thoughts, arch foe of blame, Sower of flowers in the dusty mart, Pure vestal of the poet's holy flame,— This is enough, and we have done our part If we but keep it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... less arranged so as to leave a lane or street between them, and are generally built of bamboo, though many have their principal timbers of teak or eng-wood. The floors are usually of split bamboo, and the roof of elephant-grass, or "thekka," as the thatch of dried leaves is called, forms a good protection against the summer sun or monsoon rains, while the walls are formed of bamboo mats, often coloured and woven into some ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... beautiful to be real, with its rows of Elizabethan cottages whose windows twinkled at us with their diamond-shaped, diamond-bright panes, sparkling under their low, thatch-eyebrows, from between black oak beams. The Tudor chimneys were as graceful as the smoke wreaths that lazily spiraled above them, and the whole effect was—was—well, inexpressibly Birket Foster. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... barn was blazing furiously, and the tired men busily engaged wetting the thatch upon the gable end of the farm-house, upon which great flakes of fire kept falling; while others were hard at work dragging the furniture out of the doors and windows, and bearing it to a place of safety, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... deal of information though by no means all he sought. He found out that he had been taken desperately ill, that he had been summarily removed from his lodging place because of the owner's superstitious dread of contagion into the miserable little thatch roofed hut in which he had nearly died thanks to the mal-practice of the rascally, drunken doctor and the ignorant half-breed nurse. He learned how Alan Massey had suddenly appeared and taken things in his own hands, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the granary, to see that thatch had been superimposed upon the tiles; this was worn away in places, revealing a roof of every variety of colour. She looked at it for quite ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder. Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was still dominant,—sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal seemed a degradation. This brute dared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... del Capulin, where night overtook me, was a hamlet of eight or ten houses, some mere stacks of thatch, out of the smoky doorway of which, three feet high, peered the half-naked inmates; others of adobe, large bricks of mud and chopped straw, which could be picked to ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the population, black, white, and brown, awfully excited, for it was blowing a furious north-wester, right up the town, and the fire was at the bottom; and as every house is thatched with a dry brown thatch, we might all have to turn out and see the place in ashes in less than an hour. Luckily, it was put out directly. It is supposed to have been set on fire by a Hottentot girl, who has done the same thing once before, on being scolded. There is no water but what runs down the ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's new ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is singular that the names should vary so little. I have never seen an instance of its poisonous powers, but I have seen a whole company of sepoys run out of their quarters because they have heard the animal make its usual cry in the thatch of the building; they say that it drops down upon ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... warriors ran off, fetched their gods, and threw them on the temple floor. Then Ongoloo, seizing a brand from the fire, thrust it into the loose cocoa-nut fibre, and set the pile in a blaze. Quickly the flames leaped into the temple thatch, and set the whole structure on fire. As the fire roared and leaped, Waroonga, with Tomeo and Buttchee, started a hymn. It chanced to be one which Zeppa had already taught the people, who at once took it up, and sent forth such a shout of praise as had never before echoed ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... another should be gathering firewood, and preparing the meal, while another should be cutting and bringing in as many soft, thick tips of hemlock or balsam boughs as possible, for the roof of the shack and the beds. How to thatch the "lean-to" is shown in ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... forests of Wiltshire. Upon reaching the hut, and showing to the man the king's signet-ring, which when leaving the standard he had told him would be the signal that any who might come for it were sent by him, the man produced the standard from the thatch of his cottage, in which it was deeply buried, and hearing that it was again to be unfurled called his two stalwart sons from their work and at once set out with Edmund and Egbert to join ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... not seem so confident. A big man with a bushy thatch of coarse graying hair and a heavy, fleshy face, he did not look like a brain. Yet Ross had been on the roster long enough to know that it was Millaird's thick and hairy hands that gathered together all the loose threads of Operation Retrograde and deftly wove them into a workable pattern. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... rose a rounded roof of straw, which was thatched over by a further layer of turf. There were few windows, and no chimneys at all—not even a hole in the roof. And what was meant by the two men who, standing on one of the turf walls, were busily engaged in digging into the rich brown and black thatch and heaving it into a cart? Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding against ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the black type of Celt. The wild thatch of his scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious untamable quality in his look ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... of the city with the plough, and made it almost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date of the building of Rome was supposed to be A.D. 753; and the Romans counted their ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... are walking, 90 Now faster—now slower. At last they have reached it— The village 'Stripped-Naked,' It's not much to look at: Each hut is propped up Like a beggar on crutches; The thatch from the roofs Has made food for the cattle; The huts are like feeble Old skeletons standing, 100 Like desolate rooks' nests When young birds forsake them. When wild Autumn winds Have dismantled the birch-trees. The people are all In the fields; they are working. Behind the poor village A ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... brushwood, fire was set to the hut, and we heard the crackling of the palm thatch, while thick stifling wreaths of white smoke burst in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... They are infidels, and therefore the good Christian must only hate them. They are thieves—they will steal from you before your very face, so devoid are they of all shame. And also murderers; gladly would they burn this poor thatch above my head, and kill me and my poor grandchild, who shares this solitary life with me, if they had the courage. But they are all arrant cowards, and fear to approach me—fear even to come into this wood. You would ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad With railways ironed o'er?— They are but sailing foam-bells Along Thought's causing stream, And take their shape and sun-color From him that ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "The thatch of the roof was as golden Though dusty the straw was and old; The wind had a peal as of trumpets, Though blowing ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... headlands, which, stretching their giant arms across the entrance to the little bay, soon shut out all view of the valley from their gaze, the last thing they noticed was their hut, the home of so many long and weary months, blazing away in regular bonfire fashion. Master Eric had put a match to the thatch of the little edifice on crossing its ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the forward poles stood Silan Petroff in a red shirt, open at the neck, showing his powerful throat and hairy chest, hard as an anvil. A thatch of gray hair fell over his forehead, under which laughed great black, warm eyes. His sleeves, turned up to the elbow, showed the veins standing out on his arms as they held the pole. Silan was leaning slightly forward, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words. A tree beside the wall stands bare, ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... to be comforted. "I see the jasper gates," she panted, fixing her hazy eyes on the scraas under the thatch, from which broken spiders' webs hung down ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... for sur-reyn'd Iades, their Barly broth, Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? And shall our quick blood, spirited with Wine, Seeme frostie? O, for honor of our Land, Let vs not hang like roping Isyckles Vpon our Houses Thatch, whiles a more frostie People Sweat drops of gallant Youth in our rich fields: Poore we call ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... there was a sound of scraping and scratching at some of the other holes. The roof was constructed of rough poles laid at short distances apart, and above these were small branches, on which was a sort of thatch of reeds and rushes. Standing close under one of the holes Beric could see nothing, but from the sound of the scratching he could tell from which side the wolf was at work enlarging it. He carefully thrust the point of his spear through the branches and gave a sudden lunge upwards. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... very gay," said Eleanor, who began to lose her temper. "All Mr. Henley's sketches are gay. The thatch on the house reminds me of the 'ends' of Berlin wool that are kept, after a big piece of work, for kettle-holders. The yellow tree and the blue tree are very pretty: there always is a yellow tree and a blue tree in Mr. Henley's sketches. I don't know what kind of trees ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... so you would notice it. He goes on grinnin' and teeterin', like he was on exhibition in a museum and I was the audience. Then he gets a view of himself in the glass over the safe there, and begins to pat down his astrakhan thatch, and punch up his puff tie, and dust off his collar. Ever see one of these peroxide cloak models doin' a march past the show windows on her day off? Well, the Baron had all those motions and a few of his own. He was ornamental, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the haze of the rain; from the thatch of the town-head houses the wind brought on us the smell of burning heather and brake ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... pits in England. This pit which lies 250 feet east of the Visitor Center may have served a spacious house which once stood nearby. It may be assumed that the missing surface structure was circular, probably of brick, had a small door, and was roofed over with thatch or ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... easy to throw a line with a worm on it towards the shore, and then draw it back, but the chub showed such little eagerness to be caught by me that I generally preferred to steer and watch my companion pulling them out as he stood in the prow, his face nearly hidden under the thatch of his straw hat. When the fish were in a biting humour, he had one on his hook every time ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Epicles, and out of the belt of Bootes the clear splendour of Arcturus has risen; now the grape-clusters take thought of the sickle, and men thatch their cottages against winter; but thou hast neither warm fleecy cloak nor garment indoors, and thou wilt be shrivelled up with cold and curse ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... went over to France, and brought back with him skilful masons, who built the church for this monastery of stone, and after the Roman fashion; for till that time stone buildings were very rare in Britain, even the church of Lindisfarne was of wood, and covered over with a thatch of straw and reeds, till bishop Eadbert procured both the roof and the walls to be covered with sheets of lead, as Bede mentions.[2] St. Bennet also brought over glaziers from France, for the art of making ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... nobody mentions unless chance brings them up. Courtlandt—the one I knew—has been dead these sixteen years. If I knew he had had a son, I'd forgotten all about it. The only graveyard isn't on the hillside; there's one under everybody's thatch." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... the desired height, and left rooted in the ground, while the two ends of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a foundation of laced willow branches. The whole construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through which the fire smoke ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... So I promptly "swatted" Tomas with the broom with such energy that the coffeepot flew up in the air and he tumbled over head foremost. His small boy sent up a wail of terror; and Billy Buster, the monkey, who was discussing a chicken bone, fled up to the thatch, where he remained all day until coaxed down by the tinkle of a spoon in a toddy glass. Tomas was out of breath, but not so much so that he could not ejaculate, "Sus! Maria Santisima, Senorita!" in injured tones. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... authors tell, in days of yore, A widow somewhat old, and very poor: Deep in a cell her cottage lonely stood, Well thatch'd, and under covert of a wood. This dowager, on whom my tale I found, Since last she laid her husband in the ground, A simple sober life, in patience, led, And had but just enough to buy her bread: But huswifing the little Heaven had lent, She duly paid a groat for quarter ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... putting myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street appeared as a vari-coloured band lying across the pale earth. There were dark and bright spots, lines and streaks, of yew and holly, red or white cottage walls and pale yellow thatch; and the plots and gardens were like large reticulated mottlings. Each had its centre of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... laid, The mimic ranks of war display'd; And onward still the Scottish lion bore, And still the scattered Southron fled before. Still, with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brighten'd at our evening fire! From the thatch'd mansion's grey-hair'd sire, Wise without learning, plain and good, And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood; Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Show'd what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought; ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... you, Wilson," said the gentleman addressed, a broad-shouldered man of forty, tanned and freckled by the eastern sun, and stooping low to avoid striking his head against the attap thatch rigged up over the stern of the boat, and giving it the aspect of a floating hut. "It's very good of you, but I think ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... you a good warm hole in the thatch," said Spare. "But you must be hungry after that long sleep,—here is a slice of barley bread. Come help ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... schoolhouse. The little building, coaxed from a grudging Maharajah, seemed to strain for light and air between two overlapping, high-walled brick warehouses. Before the door, in a spot where the scorching sun-rays came but fitfully between a mesh of fast-decaying thatch, the old hag who had followed Rosemary McClean lay snoozing, muttering to herself, and blinking every now and then as a street dog blinks at the passers-by. She took no notice of Mahommed Gunga until ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' ploughman described his mother's ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... he was better skilled in chemistry, knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the Aztec. May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip the Slav ere he grows a thatch ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... afterwards became famous as the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving to that place the name of Kilrimont.[28] The earliest Celtic church at St. Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known as ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... a moment's thought he replied, "There is some truth in your remark- you are overgrown, and I suppose I shall have to build you a thatch somewhere, For to-night you can rest under ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... came of the great storm in the spring of '97, the year that we had two great storms. This was the first one, and I remember it well, because I found in the morning that it had lifted the thatch of my pigsty into the widow's garden as clean as a boy's kite. When I looked over the hedge, widow—Tom Lamport's widow that was—was prodding for her nasturtiums with a daisy grubber. After I had watched her ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... father, the mother and the child receiving the same treatment. The friends and relations are then anointed, the turmeric being applied, however, to their left feet. The bow, arrows, da, and u star are carefully placed inside the inner surface of the thatch on the roof, and the ceremony is over. Rice flour is then distributed to all who are present, and the male adults are given liquor to drink. After two or three months the ears of the child are bored and ear-rings are inserted. These ear-rings ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... second field sloping up to a long, low-lying wooden house, with thatched roof and open squares for windows. Alleyne gazed across at it with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes—for this, he knew, must be the home of his fathers. A wreath of blue smoke floated up through a hole in the thatch, and was the only sign of life in the place, save a great black hound which lay sleeping chained to the door-post. In the yellow shimmer of the autumn sunshine it lay as peacefully and as still as he had oft pictured it ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gives the following account of the furniture of the house of an Obi-woman, or African witch in Jamaica: "The whole inside of the roof, (which was of thatch) and every crevice of the walls were stuck with the implements of her trade, consisting of rags, feathers, bones of cats, and a thousand other articles. Examining further, a large earthen pot or jar, close covered, contained ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... of a vast stone building, or rather pile of buildings, which, clustering around a conical hill, had the air of a fortress rather than a religious establishment. But, though the walls were of stone, the roof was composed of a light thatch, as usual in countries where rain seldom or never falls, and where defence, consequently, is wanted chiefly against the rays ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... sudden strong gusts. The rooks had been pitch-falling all the morning, so we knew that bad weather was due; and when we came out from the schooling that Mr. Glennie gave us in the hall of the old almshouses, there were wisps of thatch, and even stray tiles, flying from the roofs, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner |
